We booked a site at Pine Acres for this past weekend for ourselves and our two daughters as part of our annual camping trip with my brother and his wife and 3 kids and my step-sister and her husband and 3 kids. We had 3 sites near each other in their "wilderness camping" area. The remainder of the sites near us were taken up by a LARGE group of people who were, by all accounts, the least respectful group of campers I have come across in my 30+ years of camping.
Let me preface the next part of my review by saying that after booking the site for this past weekend, I had called to book an additional site for an upcoming weekend for me, my wife and 2 kids and my mother and father in law. I was told that there was either a maximum of 4 adults and 2 tents allowed per site, or one family and that this was due to the campground's insurance carrier's policy. So, we had to book 2 sites for the 6 of us for that upcoming weekend. Apparently this did not apply to the large group that had the remainder of the sites around us this past weekend. On one of their sites, they had 4 tents and at least 10-12 people staying on it. On Friday night, the whole group of them which had to be 30+ people were partying on that site until about 2AM - little kids and all were up. The staff did NOTHING to stop this. It was our belief that they were too intimidated by this group to say anything to them.
Saturday morning I had to leave the campground to go to an ATM because the one at the campground wasn't working and when I returned I asked the woman at the gate about the "group sites" that they offered in the wilderness area to which she replied "we don't offer group sites". So, I asked why this group was allowed to have 4 tents and way more than the allotted number of people on their site and why nothing was done about the partying the night before and she acted shocked. (I know for a fact that it wasn't just our group who complained about this large group of people). She said that someone would be sent over there right away to take care of that and that they certainly weren't allowed that many tents/people per site.
Another incident on Saturday morning. At 8AM, one of the members of the large group that was on the site next to my step sister decided that all of us wanted to hear his music blasting out of his truck. My brother went over and asked him to turn it down because his 1 year old daughter was napping. He turned it down, but later that morning after we had all left for the pool, my brother stayed behind rocking his daughter and started getting dirty looks from across the way from this guy and his buddy. When my brother said "Yes?" the guy went into his truck and blasted some very vulgar hip hop. Coward waited until my brother was there by himself with a baby to start with him. Stay classy.
Later on Saturday I was making a trip out of the campground to buy wood ($2-$3 per bundle at houses just outside of the campground) and couldn't find the tag that had to be on the rear view mirror of my car while we were in the campground. I was looking around on the floor of the car for it when one of the staff on a golf cart came up and started giving me a hard time about not having the tag. I told him that I was currently looking for it and he reiterated the importance of this tag. At this point I was less than pleased for being badgered about something like this after the crap that they did nothing about the night before so I said "Tell me something, are you going to go to that site down the hill and ask them to remove 2 of their tents since they're way over the limit of tents and people?" He decided to change the subject, so I asked again and again he changed the subject. He was afraid of them.
Long story short - nothing was ever done about the large group. When we left Sunday they still had 4 tents on one site. As far as the rest of the place - the pool isn't as big as it looks on the website and was PACKED. Not only that, they opened the pool at 10 and closed it at about 3:15 on a day that was in the 80's and very humid. They had some nice activities for the kids - most of which had some fee attached. Oh, and we cancelled our upcoming reservation and they were kind enough to waive the $25 cancellation fee because of the miserable experience we had this weekend. read more